Sunday, June 03, 2007

GOIN' BACK TO CALI

Yep, and if life wasn't busy enough, this week after showing how the game's played in our annual golf tournament, I'll be travelling to Los Angeles to rescue my brother and his wife from the clutches of SoCal's chemicals and acids. Man, it looks so much different on the postcards. I'm hoping to take my lovely wife to Compton for a cultural field trip, but I'm pretty sure she won't be interested. Will be meeting the esteemed Dr. Ralph Watkins on my journey who, among other accomplishments, he's the author of both I Ain't Afraid to Speak My Mind and Noise and Spirit: The Religious Sensibilities of Rap Music. I better do my research so I don't go in completely unprepared or I might get more of a schooling that I bargained for. Taking a wad of cash to blow at Ameoba in Hollywood. It's obligatory for a guy like me.

Watched some girls' softball this weekend. I'll be honest, I've never seen individuals in any sport that hustle more than these girls. I mean, they run full sprint from the dugout to the field and back to the dugout again. Wish I could teach a few people in my everyday life to show that kinda hustle. Like at work. I think I'm going to try it. On Monday, I'm going to run full sprint everywhere in the office and see if it catches on. If you're in my way, you betta bring your elbows up because you're gonna catch a bad one, f'real.

I'm watching a movie this morning that my buddy Clint passed onto me called The Holy Mountain. It might be the very worst movie I've ever seen in my life. Clint set a high mark before with a DVD of G.G. Allin which let me so completely offended that I destroyed the DVD so that no one else could find it and experience the same sadness that I did. Yeah, who needs enemy's when you have friends like Clint. Sometimes I swear he only makes me watch it to see if I don't watch it and try to act like I did: "Yeah, I watched it yesterday. It was hot, yo." Clint would be like, "I know you're lying because there'd be no way you enjoyed it." This movie's just one long drug trip on film--you know like the sequence in Easy Rider where Peter Fonda's leaning against a gravestone in a cemetary weeping in the rain? I've never done hallucinogenic drugs and nor do I plan to when you have movies to replicate the experience. At this point, I'm only listening for Company Flow samples because Clint emailed me to confirm that there was material sampled from this movie in the Company Flow song, "Population Control." Interesting factoid about this movie is that it was funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I'm telling you, this is the weirdest and, worse, the longest. I feel like I've been watching this for almost three hours.

Got Sawx and Spanks tonight on ESPN. At least I know I can count on ESPN to actually air games because, yesterday, our local Fox affiliate decided to air Cardinals versus the Astros instead of the Sox and Yanks. Yeah, some good ol' Texas baseball. Astros won 8-3. Yea. More importantly, Sox won 11-6 in what was a much better game involving much better teams--well, at least one better team. Fox needs to go to school and recognize. 13.5 game lead over the Yanks. I'm assuming we're still leading the division by a pretty large margin as well. It's still June, though. They're about to head out to Oakland and feast on the Athletics.

Yanks walked Youkilis three times last night to end his hitting streak at 23 games. Do you think that was accidental? Whatta cheap team that, since they won't win the game, they'll at least end a hitting streak. Watch the pitch locations on those walks, they weren't even trying see him hit. Loser team. Oh yeah, and Clemens won't be pitching at his first start Monday because of a groin injury. Man, the headlines write themselves.

The anniversary was awesome. Enjoyed some Italian, chocolate and then the hot tub with an incoming thunderstorm. I also spent some time marvelling at the satellite music options and how Reggaeton is now extinct because they could never come up with another beat. Fell asleep to War of the Worlds. Woke up in the morning with another insignificant argument with my wife when I was watching VH1 Classic and a Taylor Dayne video. My lovely wife emphatically argued that it was not Taylor Dayne because Taylor was white and the woman in the video was not white. We went back and forth for a while and, it turns out, who I was watching was not Taylor Dayne, but instead it was Shalamar's Jody Watley.

This is Taylor Dayne. I thought she might be Philipino or, like Fergie, Canadian, but turns out she's straight-up. Certainly, though, white and not Jody Watley. Whatever. That was way too much time dedicated to Taylor Dayne and Jody Watley. Sorry.

Alright, folks, I gotta get ready to go to work and, after that, ready to go to Cali like my man LL--except, of course, without leaving my drawers in someone elses hamper.

3 comments:

Mmmm...rescue. Two factual items here concerning Watkins. First, I think he only edited "Noise and Spirit" or he might have only written a chapter for it. But it is a compilation of essays. Secondly, he has a new book out right now: "The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation." Haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it's straight up.

Aw yea, Holy Mountain, El Topo, and Alejandro Jodorowski, just can't get much odder cinema than that. That is, other than David Lynch's Eraserhead or E. Elias Merhige's Begotten. Those will also keep you wondering what drugs evoked such imagery. If you make it down Crenshaw, don't try to reinact Doughboy's scene off Boyz in the Hood.